RHRealityCheck.org

(VIDEO) Parental Notification in Illinois: Forcing Young Women Into Harm's Way

2010-02-09T07:00:00-05:00

While Illinois has a mandatory parental involvement law on the books, it has long been enjoined. Thus, a young woman in Illinois who is capable of making her own abortion decision can do so with the guidance of her health care provider and other trusted adults. Young women are not forced to involve their parents when they do not feel safe doing so. However, the state is aggressively seeking to end that court protection for young women and to enforce the Illinois Parental Notification of Abortion Act.

It is imperative to put an end to the threat of parental notification in Illinois, and to work to eliminate similar laws across the country.

I have seen firsthand the harms that forced parental involvement impose on young women. My first clinic position in this field was as a counselor in Colorado before that state adopted parental notification. Every weekend I would counsel young women from the neighboring state of Utah, who had lied to their parents, borrowed money, found often unreliable transportation, and driven long hours on strange highways and interstates to get to our clinic. It was not unusual to arrive at the clinic and find the young woman and the person who had traveled with her sleeping in a car.

They certainly didn't have money for lodging and scarcely enough for food. However, they so feared for their safety and their future that they were willing to go to extreme measures to avoid being forced to involve their parents in their unintended pregnancy. These young women feared being beaten or thrown out of their homes if their parents learned they were pregnant.

Granted, there are young women who voluntarily tell their parents; in fact, many young women come to our clinic with their mothers. Unfortunately, however, not all teens live in this reality. For those who would not otherwise tell a parent, these laws can impose irreversible physical and psychological harms. The health and well being of these young women depends on putting an end to these dangerous laws.

In the following video, Lorie Chaiten of the ACLU discusses parental notification laws in Illinois.

Pushing for “Zero Tolerance” on Sexual Violence in DRC

2010-02-09T07:00:00-05:00

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been torn by violent conflicts since its independence from Belgium in 1960. Beginning in 1998, the Second Congo War involved seven foreign armies, these major actors driven largely by desires for control over natural resources, including diamonds, copper, zinc and coltan, these “economic forces and mineral resources fueling the war”. A peace accord in 2003 has not prevented sporadic fighting nor have the international peacekeeping forces been able to prevent rebel forces from intensifying assaults in the Ituri and North-Kivu provinces of the country in recent times.

Along with these conflicts has come widespread violence aimed at the civilian population, especially women. There is no shortage of reports or data documenting the abhorrent extent of sexual violence in the DRC. Primarily meant to protect the population, armed forces have been complicit in sexual violence on many levels. Human Rights Watch (HRW) in their 2009 report “Soldiers who rape, commanders who kill” looks at the inability of the DRC peace accord in 2003 has not prevented sporadic fighting nor have the international peacekeeping forces been able to prevent rebel forces from intensifying assaults in the Ituri and North-Kivu provinces of the country in recent times. government, military and judiciary to stop rape and the complicity of some of these actors in perpetuating sexual violence. Similarly, the group Doctors Without Borders (DWB) states, “more than three quarters of the women that we have treated have been raped by unknown armed soldiers.”

In 2004, DWB treated 270 rape victims over the course of the year in North Kivu. Today, they treat that many victims of rape on average every month. While the nearly 54 percent of those affected are between the ages of 19 and 45, a startling 40 percent of victims are girls under the age of 18. Women are targets working in the fields. Women are targets walking home. Women are targets virtually everywhere.

Since 1999, the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC) has been on the ground trying to create peace. The UN has recently extended the MONUC mandate until 31 May 2010, with the next few months specifically aimed at protecting civilians as well as facilitating the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of Congolese armed groups and repatriation and resettlement of foreign armed groups. For years now, DRC President Joseph Kabila and MONUC have pushed a “zero tolerance” policy against sexual violence and misconduct by the armed forces. This objective has obviously not been met. The Kimia II military operations (in Swahili and Lingala, Peace II), which saw MONUC lending support to the DRC army (FARDC), despite the army being implicated in grave human rights violations, failing to stop sexual violence. Considered by UN human rights actors, like Special Rapporteur Philip Alston to be a “catastrophe” for human rights, Kimia II has been replaced by the FARDC’s new operation “Amani Leo” (“Peace Today”) which commenced in January 2010. It can only be hope that the renewed MONUC mandate and Amani Leo operations make some progress towards the “zero tolerance” policy, which has seemed until now, just a policy on paper.

The power of such a zero tolerance policy, if implemented and effective, cannot be understated. It is not simply a question of a completely unacceptable situation with regards to women’s security. Central to the issue is the sheer lawlessness that results when the armed forces are the perpetrators of violence. Some potentially effective strategies have been proposed to achieve justice for victims and put an end to sexual violence, including by the Office of the UN Senior Adviser and Coordinator on Sexual Violence in the DRC. Their strategy talks of combating impunity for cases of sexual violence by strengthening the judiciary and putting in force the DRC’s 2006 laws on sexual violence. They also highlight the need to reduce vulnerability and exposure of women to sexual violence, with more effective responses from security forces and better vetting to exclude from security forces “individuals who lack integrity”.

Persistent calls have been made directly to President Kabila from political leaders in the US and Europe for an end to the sexual violence. During a visit to Goma, the capital of North Kivu, in August of last year, Hillary Clinton pushed for “no impunity for the sexual and gender-based violence” in her meeting with Kabila, after first meeting with refugees at the Magunga camp. In December of last year, commenting on President Kabila's declarations against violence, the Swedish European Union Affairs Minister Cecilia Malmstroem, whose country held the EU presidency until December of last year, reiterated “Congolese authorities are responsible for making sure the policy of zero tolerance is not merely words, but is also translated into reality”.

This is not an entirely new step. The EU has long been calling for an end to sexual violence in the DRC, with a resolution from January 2008 of the European Parliament noting that women in the eastern part of the DRC are being “systematically attacked on an unprecedented scale” with the atrocities against women structured around rape, gang rape, sexual slavery and murder having “far-reaching consequences including the physical and psychological destruction of women”. It further notes that although the DRC Humanitarian Action Plan 2008 reported 32 353 rapes during 2007, this was probably only a fraction of the total number.

Despite global pressure, reports on the ground are less hopeful. According to Refugees International, enforcement of the zero tolerance policy “especially of senior commanders, remains effectively non-existent”. Considered a “lawless world”, it is difficult to know what it will take to put an end to the rapes. Justice is weak in the DRC. UN Resolutions 1325 (2000) and 1820 (2008) on women and peace and security explicitly call for an end to sexual violence and demand the immediate end by all parties to armed conflict of all acts of sexual violence against civilians with immediate effect. Resolution 1820 specifically states that, among other things, rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or a constitutive act with respect to genocide. Yet, in practical terms, on a day to day basis, where can women find refuge?

The complexity of addressing these issues should not be underestimated. I am writing this piece now in an effort to join other NGOs, UN agencies and activists from the international community pushing to make sure that the past years of sexual violence do not remain the norm. I am writing as a reminder that “zero-tolerance” does not simply mean a reduction in numbers and must not only be words on paper. The global community MUST watch to ensure that President Kabila’s commitment to the ELIMINATION of sexual violence is made real.

ICare "Mis-Advertisements" on Contraception and Abortion

2010-02-09T07:00:00-05:00

In part one of our series, we watched the Human Life Alliance play fast and lose with the facts when it came to abortion laws in the United States and the various developmental stages of the human fetus.

In part 2, we saw them use unsound "scientific" studies and reports intended to guilt rape and incest victims into carrying pregnancies to term by, for example, having a rape crisis counselor quoted as saying, “I am familiar with no case of incest-related abortion that did not make matters worse.”

But the misinformation presented in those pages is nothing compared to the outright lies in the "Abortion Methods" section of the Icare advertising supplement.

Let's take each statement one at a time:

Emergency Contraception - Plan B (Morning After Pill)

Icare Claim: The Icare supplement claims that EC prohibits a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus, and that therefore emergency contraception causes abortion.

Fact: First, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, EC does not work by causing a fertilized egg not to implant.

With ECPs, higher doses of the same hormones found in regular birth control pills prevent pregnancy in the first place by keeping the egg from leaving the ovary <http://www.womenshealth.gov/Glossary/index.cfm#ovaries> or keeping the sperm from joining the egg. While it is possible that ECPs might work by keeping a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus, the most up-to-date research suggests that ECPs do not work in this way.

Even if it did cause a fertilized egg not to implant, that is not actually a method of abortion, as the HHS explains. "Emergency contraception works before pregnancy begins. It will not work if a woman is already pregnant. Abortion takes place after a fertilized egg has attached to the uterus."

Scientific data agrees that pregnancy does not occur until implantation, meaning that Plan B cannot by definition cause an abortion.

"Before pregnancy begins, a female oocyte (egg) must join, by spermatozoon in a process referred to in medicine as "fertilization", or commonly known as "conception" (though the definition of the English word "conception" is somewhat controversial). Fertilization occurs usually through the act of sexual intercourse, in which a man ejaculates inside a woman, thus releasing his sperm; however, the advent of artificial insemination has made it possible for women to become pregnant if prexisting medical conditions from either the woman or the man make fertilization through sexual intercourse difficult, or if a woman chooses to become pregnant without a male partner, for any number of reasons. Though pregnancy begins at implantation, it is often convenient to date from the first day of a woman's Last Menstrual Period (LMP). This is used to calculate the Expected Date of Delivery (EDD).”

RU 486 - Mifeprex (The Abortion Pill):

Icare Claim: Besides the obviously loaded language of the section (the repeated use of the word baby, or switching "abortionist" for doctor or health care provider) Icare plays very lose with the statistics on RU 486 failure. They state an 8 percent failure rate for pregnancies of up to 7 weeks, and a 23 percent failure rate for pregnancies from 8-9 weeks.

Fact: According to recent studies RU 486 has a 3 percent failure rate at 7 weeks or less. Mifeprex is not FDA approved or medically recommended in pregnancies past 7 weeks, making the other statistic, which came from an anti-abortion website and is a link to an article that no longer exists nothing more than an irrelevant scare tactic.

Vacuum Aspiration

Icare Claim: In explaining the procedure, Icare states "The baby is torn into pieces as he or she is being pulled through the hose." During manual vacuum aspiration, the gestational sac is often left intact.

Fact: During the first trimester the fetus, which is at most 2 and 1/2 inches long and does not have limbs. It also is incapable of feeling pain until at least 26 weeks.

Dilation and Suction Curettage (D&C):

Icare Claim: Icare states that a D&C will create "profuse" bleeding. The citation for that goes to a site that does not mention profuse bleeding.

Fact: D&C's were often used to treat abnormal or irregular bleeding in women.

Dilation and Evacuation (D&E):

Icare Claim: Icare, in its truest propaganda form, gives a grizzly description of the procedure known as D&E, with crushing skulls, snapping spines and torn limbs. To support its version, Icare sources the American Pregnancy Association, The National Abortion Federation, and WebMD.

Fact: It comes as no shock that in going to each source, there is no description like the one they give, even in the clinical guidelines section they reference. These are scare tactics at their worst. There is also no mention that 90 percent of all abortions are performed in the first trimester, well before a D&E would be necessary. The increase in second trimester abortions that would require a D&E is often being caused by the creation of additional rules that are making it harder for women to quickly obtain abortions, and causing less providers to offer them.

Induction or Prostaglandin Abortion

Icare Claim: The advertising supplement speaks of the procedure as if it were a common type of abortion readily performed. They claim that the baby is killed before hand during the process to avoid legal complications, and that should the baby somehow survive it is left to malinger without medical care to ensure its demise.

Fact: Icare's sources for this section are Jill Stanek, and WebMD. They use WebMD selectively as a source, not mentioning that this type of abortion "in the second or third trimester is usually done because of a medical problem or illness present in the fetus or the pregnant woman." Although it is true that a fetus is injected potassium chloride beforehand to insure it is not birthed alive, they fail to mention that the reason it is necessary is because of the so called "partial birth" abortion ban pushed by anti-abortion activists, a definition so loose that it can be spread to a myriad of other medical methods. "To avoid performing [what could potentially be defined as] a partial birth abortion while performing a legal dilatation and extraction, digitalis or potassium chloride may be injected onto the fetus to induce preoperative fetal death."

Partial Birth Abortion or Dilation and Extraction (D&X)

Icare Claim: This section is detailed, gory, and written with no actual citations to any medical texts or supporting materials. Icare does state, however, that although a “partial birth abortion” ban has been passed, it has not had any impact on the frequency of late term abortions. There is a reason for that, as you will see.

Fact: There is no such medical term as a "partial birth abortion." NPR has an excellent factual look at the D&X debate, noting that contrary to the claims of some abortion opponents, most such abortions do not take place in the third trimester of pregnancy, or after fetal "viability." Indeed, when some members of Congress tried to amend the bill to ban only those procedures that take place after viability, abortion opponents complained that would leave most of the procedures legal.

Birth Control

Yes, to the Human Life Alliance, even birth control is an abortion, meaning a vast majority of the female population is having abortions left and right, month after month, over and over again.

Icare states "Studies have shown that ovulation rates in women taking oral contraceptives ranged from 1.7 percent to 28.6 percent per cycle. Ovulation rates for women taking progestin only pills (the mini-pill) ranged from 33 percent to 65 percent."

Fact: The source for ”breakthrough ovulation rates” has moved, but I chased down the original article here. First, the rates of "breakthrough ovulation" were only that high, according to the article, if women did not take them as prescribed. Secondly, and more importantly, the data used by the article, which was published in 1999, was pulled from studies ranging back to 1967.

Dr. James Trussell, an expert on reproductive health at Princeton University, dismisses the group’s argument.

“It really does not matter how many ovulations there are,” states Trussell. “Both types of pills cause thickened cervical mucus that blocks sperm from ascending. Of course pregnancy can occur even when the pills are used perfectly. A third mechanism of action is making the endometrium not receptive to implantation. Thus, in theory a fertilized egg would be prevented from implanting. While that would not be an abortion (which can occur only after implantation), some would consider anything that works after fertilization to be an abortion.”

Trussell continues on to point out that the same issues that can face birth control (a possible ovulation that then leads to a fertilized but non-implanted egg), also happens to mothers who breastfeed. Perhaps that will be the next anti-abortion campaign: Formula Feeding for Life.

Icare claims that birth control manufacturers have "redefined the terms 'conception' and 'pregnancy.'" However, it's quite clear who is trying to redefine the timeline.

Misrepresentation. Guilt. Partially quoted sources. Misleading rhetoric. Icare specializes in all of those tactics. And, as you will see in Part 4, they push even harder when discussing the effects of having an abortion.

Partner Violence and Unintended Pregnancy: Time to Make the Connections

2010-02-08T15:13:51-05:00

We have known for many years that violence and abuse are more closely associated with unintended pregnancy than with pregnancies that are intended. Forced sex, fear of violence if she refuses sex, and difficulties negotiating contraception and condom use in the context of an abusive relationship all contribute to increased risk for unintended pregnancy as well as for sexually transmitted infections including HIV. Newer research now also points to the influences of male control of contraception and pregnancy pressure on unintended pregnancy.

We are lead researchers of a new study, which appeared in Contraception online in late January. The research report, “Pregnancy coercion, intimate partner violence and unintended pregnancy,” highlights a phenomenon we labeled reproductive coercion to describe explicit male behaviors to promote pregnancy. Particularly for women with a history of partner violence, these behaviors are significantly linked with unintended pregnancy.

Such reproductive coercion takes many forms, but frequently involves a male partner’s direct interference with a woman’s use of contraception (‘birth control sabotage’). It includes removing condoms during sex to get her pregnant, intentional breaking of condoms, and preventing her from taking birth control pills.2,3

In addition, a male partner may utilize threats and coercion to pressure a woman to get pregnant (‘pregnancy coercion’), such as telling her not to use contraception and threatening to leave her if she doesn’t get pregnant.

Our previous qualitative research has pointed to a range of reasons that a man might engage in such behaviors including wanting to leave a legacy, desiring to keep a woman connected to him in some way, as well as need for control in the relationship. Clearly, much more research with men and boys needs to be done to understand male involvement in unintended pregnancies and how to positively engage men and boys in discussions of healthy relationships.

Our new study included English- and Spanish-speaking women ages 16 to 29 who sought health care at five reproductive health clinics in California. The reasons the women sought care included annual physical exams, contraception, pregnancy testing, and testing for sexually transmitted infections.

Participants completed a confidential computerized survey (with questions read to them via headphones) before their clinic visit; the clinic providers did not see the responses. More than half of the respondents (53 percent) reported experiencing physical or sexual violence from a male partner, or someone they were dating or going out with some time in their lives. A quarter (25 percent) reported that they had ever experienced ‘reproductive coercion,’ with 19 percent reporting pregnancy coercion and 15 percent reporting birth control sabotage. Women who reported experiencing both partner violence and reproductive coercion experienced a 100 percent increase in their risk for unintended pregnancy.

Unintended pregnancy is clearly a complex phenomenon. It can be caused by a number of factors including: a mismatch of intentions and behaviors for both males and females (i.e., not wanting to get pregnant, while not using contraception or a condom, often called ‘contraceptive and pregnancy ambivalence’); limited access to contraception; lack of knowledge about the range of contraceptive options; stigma associated with asking a partner to use a condom; as well as substance use such as alcohol accompanying intercourse.

Our study adds another important piece to this puzzle: Male partners interfering with women’s reproductive autonomy. Moreover, the effect of male partner reproductive coercion on unintended pregnancy is likely to be greater in the context of partner violence, given the clear threat of violence if she tries to resist her partner’s wishes.

There are many unanswered questions around the interrelationship between reproductive coercion, partner violence, and unintended pregnancy. Our study provides preliminary findings indicating a significant connection, but it was limited to lower income women seeking care in a particular type of family planning clinic in a particular region. We need to know the prevalence of reproductive coercion when women are seeking gynecologic care in other settings such as hospitals or primary care clinics, as well as how prevalent this is across the general population.How often does reproductive coercion occur in the absence of partner violence? Does partner violence precede effective attempts to control a woman’s pregnancy and the outcomes of that pregnancy? Or do men’s coercive behaviors regarding contraception and reproductive outcomes precede physical and sexual violence in the relationship? How do men recognize and understand reproductive coercion? And, perhaps most critically, why do men engage in such controlling behaviors, and what strategies will successfully engage men and boys in preventing partner violence and reproductive coercion?

Beyond answering such research questions, we need to identify effective strategies to increase awareness about reproductive coercion among both men and women. Women may perceive reproductive coercion and physical violence in a relationship as distinct issues, and may need support and information to connect the dots between this range of behaviors and their reproductive health needs. If family planning practitioners pay attention to and address reproductive coercion, they may be more successful at identifying clients at risk both for unintended pregnancy and for harm from partner violence.

Further, such identification is likely to improve the efficacy of family planning services, because knowledge of reproductive coercion can inform counseling about contraceptive adherence and choices (women at risk can be offered methods that are not easily detected by male partners and are not reliant on male partner consent). This knowledge that a woman is experiencing reproductive coercion can trigger more intensive use of prevention strategies that can reduce unintended pregnancies, including among adolescents, and promote a woman’s safety.

It also would be wise to consider incorporating efforts to reduce reproductive coercion into comprehensive sexuality education and pregnancy prevention programs. Making discussions of healthy relationships the foundation of sexuality education would be a good start. Then incorporating discussions of abusive behaviors and partner violence into curricula that discuss contraceptive negotiation would be particularly helpful in increasing a woman’s success at contraceptive negotiation and enhancing her reproductive autonomy. Prevention programs that engage men and boys in reducing unintended pregnancies should also offer opportunities to discuss masculinities, gender equity, and reproductive justice.

Finally, vehicles like the currently authorized Violence Against Women Act’s Health Provision could assist in supporting needed health research and innovations in practice related to intimate partner violence and reproductive coercion, including efforts to promote healthy relationships. We should encourage professional health care provider organizations to recognize and develop relevant standards and competencies. For instance, family planning standards can be updated to address issues of partner violence and reproductive coercion.

Many people were stunned and alarmed by the Guttmacher Institute’s January report on teen pregnancy rates in the United States. It noted a three percent increase in pregnancies among 15- to 19-year-olds from 2005 to 2006—the first increase in some 15 years. While teens and young women report the highest rate of unintended pregnancies, many adult women experience unintended pregnancies as well. Experts have been telling us for years that almost half of pregnancies in the United States are unintended (i.e., mistimed, unplanned, and/or unwanted).

The causes and mechanisms that underlie unintended pregnancy are numerous and complex, but one thing is clear. If we are serious about reducing unplanned pregnancies in this country, we must bridge the gap between efforts to reduce violence against women and girls and efforts to reduce unintended pregnancy. We need innovative programs for both young men and women that address both partner violence and healthy relationships.

1. Miller, E., M. R. Decker, et al. (2010 Epub ahead of print). "Pregnancy Coercion, Intimate Partner Violence, and Unintended Pregnancy." Contraception.

2. Center for Impact Research. (2000). "Domestic Violence & Birth Control Sabotage: A Report from the Teen Parent Project."

3. Miller, E., M. R. Decker, et al. (2007). "Male Partner Pregnancy-Promoting Behaviors and Adolescent Partner Violence: Findings from a Qualitative Study with Adolescent Females." Ambulatory Pediatrics 7(5): 360-366.

4. Finer, L. B. and S. K. Henshaw (2006). "Disparities in rates of unintended pregnancy in the United States, 1994 and 2001." Perspectives on Sexual & Reproductive Health 38(2): 90-96.

STOKING FIRE: The Chastity-Prolife Connection

2010-02-08T10:00:00-05:00

Eleanor Bader writes a monthly column for RH Reality Check.

Generation Life, a national Catholic youth group founded in 1999 by ultra-right winger Brandi Swindell, sees its raison d’être as pushing “the chastity-prolife connection."

The West Chester, Pennsylvania-headquartered group “sidewalk counsels” outside the Philadelphia Women’s Center at least once a month. It’s the usual taunts and vitriol, say clinic staff and volunteers, but with a twist--a message that can only be described as befuddling: “Chastity is for lovers.”

“They lecture us when they picket, saying, ‘God doesn’t want sex outside of marriage. He gave us sex to propagate. Be chaste,’ ” Escort Co-coordinator Chris Hill says. They also target particular demographics with messages that they hope will resonate. African Americans patients, for example, are warned that they might be murdering the next Barack Obama. Similarly, men who accompany their girlfriends or wives to the facility are hit with machismo: “Real men step up. They don’t kill their babies.”

And that’s the crux of Generation Life’s mission, the preaching of an ossified formula of gendered behavior that is both intensely rigid and rooted in fantasy. Their website, www.generationlife.org, lays out the basics. In a section for young women, the instructions read like a roadmap for submission. “A lady is modest, pure, and chaste, understands chastity, values her sexuality, appreciates her fertility…Knows her body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit…She loves babies and nurtures her family. She is the heart of her home, finds strength in her husband, understands sacrificial love, and is happy and content.“ In short, the message is simple: Suck it up, girls, and remember the hierarchy. Women obey men and men obey God.

But that’s not all. In The World According to Generation Life, “Dressing modestly is the frontline to chastity. It isn’t fair to say one thing to a guy with verbal language and another with your body or clothes language. If you make a commitment to living chastity, wearing skimpy, tight, or revealing clothes will make it hard for you to attract the right kind of guys to date.”

You can almost see Generation Life’s theoreticians shrugging their shoulders and grinning impishly, as if to say, “boys will be boys,” penile-driven creatures unable to resist the lust that has bedeviled red-blooded [read straight] males, from peasants to presidents, since time immemorial.

“Guys are stimulated differently than girls,” the website adds. “Open mouth kissing will lead a guy to become sexually aroused but a girl will simply feel more affection toward him…Guys have a higher sex drive and girls have a higher love drive.” This dichotomy, Generation Life reports, requires “real” men to not only be chaste, but to be chivalrous. “Girls don’t want to be the ones to initiate. They want a guy who will initiate.”

It’s like a fairy tale, with Knights in Shining Armor protecting needy damsels from external threats. The trick, of course, is having a quiver full of children and opposing abortion and family planning.

It’s worth underscoring that opposition to abortion is a key tool in Generation Life’s ideological toolbox. Indeed, it’s the hook used to snare kids into paying attention to the group’s larger political messages—opposition to gender equality and sexual freedom. In fact, in the workshops they offer in 7th and 8th grade parochial school classrooms across the country, gory pictures of allegedly aborted fetuses are used to gross out students. It’s then a short leap from revulsion—after all, few of us relish looking at pictures of bloody body parts—to the promotion of celibacy until marriage. Of course, 12 and 13 year olds who don’t know better are predictably receptive to black-and-white rules about “chaste living,” dating, and sexual propriety.

Furthermore, few middle schoolers question the behavioral tenets that Generation Life puts forward, all of them enforced and controlled by girls and women. Among them: necklines should not be lower than four fingers below the collarbone; garments should not be sheer, or made of thin material or spandex; snappy backs, halters, and backless dresses or blouses should be avoided; tank tops should be covered by a jacket or sweater; shirts should not be shorter than four fingers above the knees; and pants should not be tight or form-fitting. If there are controls on acceptable male apparel, they’re not listed on Generation Life’s roster of don’ts.

It’s one of the few areas in which the group’s behavioral restrictions are in any way opaque. According to Amanda Kitterly, Director of Clinic Affairs at the Philadelphia Women’s Center, Gen Life protesters not only impose restrictions on how members are supposed to dress, the leadership views the world as a place where hard-and-fast principles can be applied to relationships, as if right and wrong are as clear-cut as day and night, straight and crooked. “They try to make good women feel bad by standing outside the clinic and saying things like, ‘We can tell you what’s right for your life. You’re wrong to have an abortion,’ “ Kitterly says. “If you ask them what they hope to accomplish by protesting at the clinic, they’ll tell you that they’re there to preach God’s love. But it’s so clear to me that this is not about either God or love. It’s about owning women and governing what women do. It’s about judgment and hatred.”

Lastly, please note that Generation Life is not anomalous. Instead, it’s one of several “pro-chastity-prolife” groups, among them, True Love Waits, The Abstinence Clearinghouse, and lovematters.com.

Roundup: It's Time to Play Monday Morning Quarterback

2010-02-08T08:52:35-05:00

So the Saints went marching in to Miami, and now they are Super Bowl champions. But despite their miraculous win over the Colts, let's be honest...this Bowl was all about the commercials. So did the Tebow/Focus on the Family ad live up to the hype?

Meh.

To be fair, there was a LOT of hype to live up to, as opinions on the ad were divided and heated. According to Rassmussen, less that half of the people surveyed agreed with CBS's decision to run the FoF ad during the Super Bowl (Of course, the anti-choice community found their own polling to claim everyone was supportive of the ad). The Washington Post dedicated their letters section to debating the merits of even debating the commercial.

Personally, I didn't really notice the commercial. I spent the first 10 seconds trying to figure out what Mary Steenburgen was promoting. Once I figured out that it was in fact that infamous Tim Tebow ad, I was trying to decide why he was tacking him mom, since he's a quarterback and that's not really his thing. Maybe she was too heavy to throw? Next thing I knew, it was done, and there was another Doritos ad running.

The LA Times agrees: a whole lot of noise for nothing.

Boy tackles mom. That was about it.

The ad that made former Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam, the unintended stars of Super Bowl XLIV was not a screed against abortion.

Nor was it a heartwarming story about a mother ignoring doctors' advice and having her baby.

It was, instead, a lighthearted take on a mother-son relationship.

Of course, the ad was benign because of the controversy. FoF also ran their "pre-game" ads, the one that CBS refused to run during the game because of their controversial nature.

The second commercial plans to go further than the first and will reveal more details about Pam Tebow's decision not to have an abortion than CBS would allow in the first ad already planned for during the Super Bowl.

This Super Bowl surprise has Focus unveiling a second ad that will also feature him Tebow and his mother and it was filmed in Orlando at the same time last month as the ad that has garnered so much attention.

Focus on the Family won't reveal the details of this surprise second ad, but CEO Jim Daly confirmed to USA Today that this ad goes further and it appears to be the original ad CBS rejected before it worked with the station on a revised commercial fitting its standards.

In the end, I suppose Focus on the Family feels good, because their "brilliant marketing strategy" got them approximately $10 million in media mentions for about $3 million dollars. And thanks to efforts like "Tailgate for Choice," many pro-choice groups got to reap some financial benefit as well. I doubt anyone changed their stance on choice based on what actually occurred on the screen.

But the biggest victory is likely Tim Tebow's. Odds are that is the only Super Bowl performance he's ever going to make.

Mini Roundup: Some folks are calling Planned Parenthood's video response to the Tebow ad racist. This coming from people who make billboards calling African American children a "species."

February 8, 2010

Pro-Life Advocates Applaud Focus on the Family's Tim Tebow Super Bowl Ad LifeNews.com

Pro-Life News: Ultrasound, Arlen Specter, Abstinence, Virginia, Georgia ... LifeNews.com

Against pro-life groups McGill Daily

Tebow ad falls short of the hype Los Angeles Times

Super Bowl XXLVIIXXLVVI Huffington Post

Letters: Say 'no' to government-funded abortion Dubuque Telegraph Herald

Letters from readers: Abortion battle Florida Times-Union

Ottawa County teen pregnancy up 14% WOOD-TV

Rise in unwanted pregnancies shows women remain fertile Scottish Daily Record

February 7, 2010

Local level planning must to ensure health care The New Nation

Letter: Going pro-life Topeka Capital Journal

Poll: Backers of Tim Tebow Pro-Life Super Bowl Ad Best Opponents by 15% LifeNews.com

Watch the Focus on the Family Pro-Life Tim Tebow Super Bowl Commercial LifeNews.com

Four in 10 agree with CBS decision to run 'pro-life' ad The Desert Sun

Klobuchar urges adoption reform Minneapolis Star Tribune

The child snatchers: U.S. missionaries are accused of 'stealing orphans' Daily Mail

Federal investigators explore charges against Roeder Kansas City Star

'Miracle' Tim Tebow Super Bowl ad puts hit on critics USA Today

February 6, 2010

'89 Giants pro-life video a courageous legacy for Tebow's Super Bowl ad BP News

More pro-life (dis)unity: Is Randall Terry helping the pro-life movement? RenewAmerica

Amid crisis in Haiti, adoptions still require careful scrutiny Boston Globe

Adoption a one-way ticket out of Haiti Times LIVE

Evangelicals' Adoption Battlecry Daily Beast

Up in arms over Tim Tebow's controversial Super Bowl ad Washington Post

Ignatieff's abortion plan 'pathetic': bishop National Post

Susan Hill, abortion-rights pioneer, dies at 61 The State

Ad Follies of the Super Bowl New York Times

Planned Parenthood Uses Tebow Response to Target More Black Abortions NewsBlaze

In The Abortion Trenches: 12th & Delaware Huffington Post

Sex Ed, With No Federal Strings? New York Times

Sex ed that works: Fine tuning abstinence message The Star-Ledger - NJ.com

February 5, 2010

Pentagon Allows Morning After Pill on Military Bases ABC News

Child Has A Child: 11 Year Old Gives Birth Gather.com

Super Bowl Sunday: What You Won't See Huffington Post

Pro-Choice Advocates Criticize CBS for Accepting Anti-Abortion Super Bowl Ad Democracy Now

Where Does NARAL Pro-Choice America Stand on the Tebow Commercial? Huffington Post

Scott Brown: Not Pro-Life, Not Catholic America Magazine

The Problem With Pro-Choice Men Daily Beast

Pro-Life Group 'Blocks Hard for Tebow' Christian Broadcasting Network

Is This Pro-Life Ad Too Graphic? National Catholic Register

Pro-Life Takes on Pop Culture Atlantic Online

Confirmation Hopes May Be Setting for Dawn Johnsen, Radical Pro-Abort Obama Pick Lifesite

Is Joy Behar the new poster child for pro-life? Gather.com

Pro-life group slams Spanish president for hiding behind 'democratic mask' Catholic News Agency

Randall Terry is Wrong, Pro-Life Author and Speaker Declares Christian News Wire

Reproductive Rights Groups Beg Obama Not to Cut Family Planning U.S. News and World Report

Too Poor to Afford Unfair Birth-Control Violation The Epoch Times

Couples Keep Adoption All in the Family NBC Los Angeles

Thomas: Super commercial a voice for life over abortion Salt Lake Tribune

Abortion Is Fine, But 'Prayer Breakfast Draws Controversy' Media Research Center

Is George W. Bush pro-life? Baltimore Sun

Women's lives at risk because of Nicaragua's abortion ban Amnesty International

Abortion Practitioner Alberto Hodari Faces Lawsuit Over Improper Abortion LifeNews.com

Utah House approves abortion law changes LocalNews8.com

What is choice really about? Dallas Morning News

Utah House OKs ultrasounds before abortions Salt Lake Tribune

Parental Notification Laws for Abortion Cause Physical and Emotional Harm Huffington Post

Anti-Abortion Billboards on Race Split Atlanta New York Times

Brookline braces for relocation of abortion clinic Tuesday Boston Globe

Abortion rights should focus on children UM Maneater

Does abstinence-only sex ed work? The Guardian

The Sex Ed Bait and Switch

2010-02-08T07:00:00-05:00

Big news last week for the “sex is evil and should be avoided” crowd---big media organizations all over the country trumpeted that abstinence-only education "works". Naturally, I was skeptical that the sex-phobes had actually produced a curriculum that convinced young people to put off sex for the 15 years between the onset of puberty and getting married, and indeed, a quick perusal of the story demonstrated that the program in question only delayed the onset of sexual activity for 2 years for a percentage of the students. As usual, by their own measurement, abstinence-only proponents were a miserable failure, and the 95 percent number (that’s the percent of Americans that have had premarital sex) remains unchanged.

But knowing as I do how much the religious right loves a bad faith argument, I was also not surprised to see abstinence-only supporters pretend that an utter failure to convince kids to wait until marriage was a win for them. Apparently, the war on sex is a war of attrition and any reduction in orgasmic activity is a plus in their book. But upon investigating the claims that the abstinence-until-marriage crew was “right”, I found that their declarations of victory were even more dishonest than usual. Because the program trumpeted by the anti-sex crew had no relationship to the abstinence-until-marriage programs promoted by the religious right and funded under the Bush administration. This successful program very narrowly taught a bunch of 6th and 7th graders to wait until they were ready, accepting that for the vast majority of them, “ready” is going to come before marriage. “Wait until prom” is a much different message than “wait until marriage”. There was no denouncing of contraception you get in the standard abstinence-only curriculum, and in fact the teachers were told that if a student expressed misinformation about condoms, that they were to correct them. As Jill Filipovic noted in the Guardian, “In other words, the programme was exactly what the abstinence portion of a good comprehensive sex-ed class would look like.”

Very few people in the comprehensive sex education camp think that 12-year-olds having sex is usually a good idea. Most kids that age want the ability to say no more than they want the right to say yes, and so crafting programs to their needs is exactly the sort of thing a good sex educator should do. But as Hanna Rosin noted, it’s silly to think that this approach will do much for 15- and 16-year-olds whose sexual activity is far more likely to be exactly what they want. At best, what we’ve learned is that teaching negotiation skills to say no is good for younger kids, and then older kids are probably still going to need and want sex-positive, medically accurate information, so that they sex they instigate on their own is safer.

Since this program that worked openly flouted the abstinence-only curriculum promoted by people like the executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, you’d think that Valerie Huber would oppose it. But instead, Huber told the New York Times that this is great news. And was shockingly honest about why she’d think that:

“The current recommendation before Congress in the 2011 budget zeroes out abstinence education, and puts all the money into broader comprehensive education,” Ms. Huber said. “I hope that either the White House amends their request or Congress acts upon this, reinstating abstinence education.”

So, in other words, she hopes that by misrepresenting this study, she can get funding reinstated for programs that have nothing in common with this single one that’s been proven effective. This shouldn’t be surprising at all -- abstinence-only is big business. Lisa Lerner at Politico wrote an interesting article demonstrating how politicians seeking political gains among conservative supporters have cynically exploited abstinence-only earmarks, and it’s interesting to see in just examining Arlen Specter’s earmarks that are the beneficiaries of the funding.

The Urban Family Council, which received more than $310,000 in earmarks in the past, collected an additional $24,000 last year. The group was founded by a Philadelphia evangelical activist and is known for its aggressive efforts to block benefits for gay partners of city employees.

A+ for Abstinence, a Christian program that runs a website called coolvirginity.com, received $24,000. The program, according to the website, “shares sexual purity in an innovative and spiritually sound way that speaks directly to the hearts of young people.”

Abstinence-only money goes to anti-choice organizations, evangelical groups, and other religious groups that then express their gratitude by reinforcing the message the Jesus was a Republican. Cutting abstinence-only funds hit the bottom line of these groups pretty hard. No wonder they want the money back, enough that they’re apparently willing to promote a study they ideologically oppose in order to reopen that funding stream.

Not that there’s anything wrong with building up non-profits that rely on government funds to do your work, of course. The problem arises when the work you do is harmful and opposed to taxpayer wishes, and you therefore misrepresent what you do in order to get your hands on the money. Valerie Huber has employed this strategy for a long time, characterizing abstinence-only in such a way that it sounds just like good comprehensive sex education, while actually supporting scare-‘em-lie-to-‘em-moralize-at-‘em ineffective, unethical abstinence-until-marriage programs. Call it the sex ed bait and switch -- the voters want comprehensive sex education that teaches kids skills so they can delay sex if they want to, and Huber is happy to pretend that’s what she’s selling if it keeps the funding flowing for the programs she wants. If she can’t be honest, it’s supposed to be the media’s job to call her out on the carpet, not give her a platform from which she claim credit for effective programs she’s seeking to demolish so she can replace them her own ineffective, moralizing ones.

Mississippi 'Personhood' Ballot Violates Rules

2010-02-08T07:00:00-05:00

It appears to be all over but the cryin' for supporters of the Mississippi "egg-as-a-person" initiative to ban abortion. RH Reality Check has discovered that a unique provision in the state's Constitution prohibits modifying the Bill of Rights by voter referendum.

A fact known by the Personhood campaign and ignored for political reasons.

"The Mississippi Constitution is clear," said Jennifer Dalven, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. "You can't change the Bill of Rights through the citizen initiative process."

Dalven also confirmed that the proposed ballot measure — which seeks to change the definition of a person to include a fertilized human egg — fails the constitutional law test in two ways: It expressly amends the Bill of Rights and it reduces the rights of women to control their medical decisions.

"Personhood" activists have admitted their primary goal is to ban abortion services by challenging Roe v Wade on 14th Amendment grounds. They claim a fertilized egg should be defined as a "person" with civil rights and due process protections.

However, if passed, the controversial state ballot measure would also have far-reaching consequences for family planning services, fertility treatments and embryonic stem cell research. Even some of the most stalwart arch-conservative anti-choice movement leaders reject the "personhood" argument.

Yet, neither the Mississippi Secretary of State nor Attorney General put the kibosh on the unlawful "Definition of a Person" amendment when it was submitted Nov. 22, 2008 for official approval.

Jan Schaefer, spokesperson for Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, deflected any responsibility for serving as a watchdog for the initiative process.

"The certificate of review issued by the AG does not constitute an endorsement of the Constitutional, statutory or substantive validity of the proposed initiative," said Schaefer.

The Secretary of State produces a lengthy Constitutional Initiative in Mississippi: A Citizen's Guide [PDF] that plainly states the ballot limitation on page 3:

The initiative process cannot be used for any of the following:

1. To modify the Bill of Rights. [Emphasis by the Secretary of State]

Sec. Delbert Hosemann did not return calls for comment about how a measure that violates the initiative rules could get so far in the process and at what cost to county clerks charged with certifying tens of thousands of signatures.

For its part, Personhood USA, the official multi-state campaign by anti-choice activists to push the ballot measures, shrugged off the latest hitch in its efforts. The national group's co-director Keith Mason admitting knowing that the ballot measure didn't pass legal muster but pushed the amendment forward anyway.

"There's multiple reasons and facets to doing an initiative and it's not necessarily to pass one," he said.

Mason claims the group has 100,000 petition signatures and would use that momentum to press forward with a statehouse bill as a "gun behind the door for legislators" even if the measure isn't certified for the ballot.

"It's not in their best interest to not be pro-life," warned Mason, a former Operation Rescue Truth Truck driver and veteran of the first-in-the-nation ballot campaign in Colorado that went down to a flaming 73-27 defeat in 2008.

Still, our discovery of the ballot's unconstitutionality is just one of the more recent snags for the Mississippi group led by Les Riley, a tractor salesman and father of 10 who has raised a scant $11,290 for the cause.

The local affiliate, Personhood Mississippi, filed a last ditch federal lawsuit Feb. 4 seeking to extend the deadline to collect and certify the required 89,000 petition signatures to make the November ballot. The group has been circulating petitions for a year but has yet to submit thousands of voter signatures to the county clerks for verification by Feb. 13, a process which can take several weeks. Two prior petition efforts in 2005 and 2007 failed to win enough support to get the question before voters.

The group is being represented in federal court by the Liberty Counsel, a conservative Christian pro bono law firm founded by televangelist Rev. Jerry Falwell. Personhood attorney Stephen Crampton argues that a 1996 opinion on petition certification for citizen initiatives by then-Attorney General Mike Moore contradicts the state constitution provision for a 12-month signature collection process.

Current AG Hood is defending the state in the suit and agrees with his predecessor's interpretation of the law. But it all appears to be for naught since the ballot is likely to be struck down for violating the Bill of Rights amendment provision even if it manages to qualify its petitions.

The only option left to anti-choice activists is to press the Mississippi legislature to introduce its own constitutional amendment as a referendum, which is allowable under state law. However, a legislatively-referred initiative would need to pass both chambers by a super majority two-thirds vote before it can be placed on the ballot.

According to Nsombi Lambright, executive director of the ACLU of Mississippi, she isn't detecting any enthusiasm among state lawmakers to walk into a political buzz saw as contentious as abortion. Especially as lawmakers grapple with far larger problems, including a nearly $500 million budget deficit and a 10.3 percent state unemployment rate.

The Creepy, Crawly Virginity Obsession

2010-02-07T23:19:00-05:00

Virginity obsession grows stronger and weirder. Also, Ariel Gore talks about women and happiness, and Andre Bauer advises starving people as forcible birth control.

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Links in this episode:

Bluebird

The New Virginity

Second virginity in her 40s?

Purity ball creepiness

This is why they're anti-choice

This episode of Reality Cast is largely going to be devoted to virginity. I have a huge backlog of fascinating stuff exploring American culture's relationship to virginity, so I thought I'd devote two segments to it. But that's not all! The interview this week is with Ariel Gore, who has a new book out about happiness and women.

Rachel Maddow reported on the guilty verdict in Kansas v. Scott Roeder, and read the statement from the Tiller family, as well as noting next possible steps.

tiller *

Roeder's extensive connections to the anti-choice community are nothing to blow off. If some anti-choice activists did conspire with him, they shouldn't be able to get away with this, especially since there's already been anti-choice moves to target other doctors for harassment.

********

Thanks to Jessica Valenti for letting me know that she was on a VH1 News Presents special called "The New Virginity". The show was an investigation of this new-ish trend of making virginity a big deal in the public eye. I say new-ish, because obsessing over the virginity of famous women has been a marketing tool since the 90s, at least, when there was a big deal made over Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson being virgins. Now there's a new round of teenage pop idols that are doing the virgin thing as a way to market themselves.

virginity 1 *

It's interesting, because obsessing over virginity is sold to the public as somehow being not about sexualizing young women. Which makes a rough sort of sense, because the point of being a virgin is that you haven't had sex. But in reality, the virgin thing is actually a very titillating thing. The virgin has become an icon in a male-dominated society because she's a sex object. Historically, virgins are cherished because the man who finally gets to marry and have sex with the virgin gets to feel like she's his and only his sex object. Virginity obsession isn't about respecting women or looking at them as something other than a sex object at all. It's about reducing women to their sexuality. It's objectifying, and therefore it fits neatly into other kinds of objectification.

The provocative pictures of Miley Cyrus fit right into this. She's naked, but pulling a sheet over herself, a little coy. In this image, you really see that virginity is a specific sexual fantasy, and it's really kind of a misogynist one, because virginity only makes sense in the context of men owning and controlling women, as the segment after the interview demonstrates. But what's interesting to me is that the new virginity proponents are aware of the misogynist origins of the concept of virginity, and the fact that virginity is a sexual fantasy, and they're trying to find ways to redefine it to escape those implications.

For instance, they're promoting the relatively new idea of male virginity. The Jonas Brothers are also being sold to tweens, and they made a fuss out of how they wore virginity rings. Which meant that one of them got married really young.

virginity 2 *

Well, not women. Tween girls. It remains to be seen if there will ever be a male figure of virginity not aimed at an audience that isn't mature enough to see how the obsession with virginity is a sexist sexual fantasy aimed at women. For a tween girl, a male virgin to look up to is a man who isn't threatening, a guy you can fantasize about dating without worrying about the scary sex stuff. So far, the adult public's relationship to famous virgins is to sexualize the gals and laugh at the guys, because male virginity is still contextualized as somewhere between a burden to the virgin and a joke to the rest of us.

And another way they're trying to redefine virginity to make it seems less sexist and less like a sexual fantasy is to create this concept of a "second virginity", where you get to be re-virginized by not having sex from here until you get married. It's what Bristol Palin is on the road selling, and it's even being utilized by some shocking types.

virginity 3 *

Staub sounds like the victim here, but of course, being a known sexual woman in the public is often fraught. And so she's now embracing this new virginity, going public with how she's born again and saving herself until marriage. Taking women who've had sex and granting them another virginity probably feels to the religious right that's pushing this like an excellent way to desexualize the concept of virginity. But most of the public hee-haws at it, so I don't think they're going to get far with this redefinition project. Also, at the end of the day, they can't escape the fact that virginity obsession is objectifying, and therefore will always roll up into creepy sexual fantasies, no matter how hard they deny it.

************

insert interview

************

The last segment was about the mainstream obsession with virginity, and how the religious right that's interested in mainstreaming their ideas is trying to desexualize and defemininize the concept, in order to make it more palatable to a public that doesn't like to think of itself as sexist. But within the subculture of American fundamentalism, sexism is not only not shameful, but expected. And so they're getting away from simply using the word "virginity" and moving towards the word "purity", which is basically like old-fashioned virginity. It's something only women have, it's explicitly about male control over female bodies. And it's creepy. The big trend, as you no doubt are aware, is for fundie fathers to take their daughters to these so-called purity balls, where they exchange vows, the girl vowing fidelity and the father vowing to control her sexuality until he hands it off to her husband. TLC ran a documentary about it.

You learn a lot about where virginity obsession comes from. For instance, a large part of it is this notion that women don't experience sexual desire, and that their motivation to have sex is strictly to please men.

purity 1 *

Taken too literally, he's saying that if your daddy doesn't tell you that you're totally do-able, you'll go out and have some guy confirm it by doing you. Again, there's no escaping the fact that virginity is a sexual fantasy, and so when you encourage men to think a lot about their daughters' virginity as this object that needs protecting, you are encouraging them to look at their daughters in an inappropriately sexual way, as this guy basically comes out and says. But he has to, because the only other option seems to be admitting that women may have sex out of desire.

What's interesting to me is that in this subculture, they seem to be much more explicit that this isn't so much about fighting back against a sexualized culture, which I think is kind of a silly goal anyway, or about defining young women as more than their vaginas, which is a great idea but one they're clearly against because they define your entire purity as a person by your vagina. It's about control. And boy hoo do they admit that this is about control.

purity 2 *

It's not the sexual objectification. It's the opposite that bothers them---that women have choices. This is about stopping that and returning women to an objectified state, where their choices are limited, and the only desires they're allowed are those that pertain to being decorative, existing to be looked at by others and sexually desired by others.

purity 3 *

When you literally cannot see women as having a purpose on this planet besides being an object that provides visual pleasure, sexual pleasure, and offspring to men, then it does introduce a serious problem in the father daughter relationship.

purity 4 *

People don't mean that it's literal incest. It's just that this is a clear-cut case of a virginity fetish, since having sex with a virgin is the sexual fantasy underpinning this entire phenomenon. These men see themselves in the role of sculpting sex objects to fit the fantasies of the kind of guys they'd like to have as son-in-laws, basically men who share their desire to control women. And because they approach their daughters primarily as sex objects, it seems incestuous, even if they don't actually assault them. We also have reason to believe that men who literally believe that women don't want sex at all, but just want to be wanted, may have real issues understanding the importance of sexual consent. After all, if you think no woman really wants to, then all sex in your mind has an element of force to it.

********

And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, they want to control all your choices edition. Lt. Gov. of South Carolina Andre Bauer is all for banning abortion. According to his campaign website, the reason why is, "He believes every child deserves the chance to explore the world we live in and experience God's creations." Then why did he say this in a town hall meeting?

bauer *

He then went on to shame a 10-year-old for giving birth, even though at 10, she's almost surely a rape victim. This was never about life. This is about shaming people, hating women, and above all, about control.

'Motherhood Politics' Hijacked Healthcare Debate

2010-02-05T12:00:00-05:00

Wendy Norris of RH Reality Check conducted an interview with Marie Wilson, the founder and president of The White House Project and former president of the Ms. Foundation. We'll post the White House Project's Denver panel discussion on leadership with women in business, academia, media and faith as soon as it becomes available.

Marie Wilson is calling a spade a spade. As she sees it, the overheated debate over abortion is being used as a convenient foil for healthcare reform in order to avoid a much more controversial cultural issue -- the role of women in contemporary American society.

That unspoken and still radioactive debate 77 years after the Equal Rights Amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1923 continues to fuel traditional notions of a woman's place in the boardroom and the bedroom.

Wilson, the founder and president of nonpartisan The White House Project, was in Denver, Colo., recently to discuss the organization's new comprehensive study, Benchmarking Women's Leadership.

But to achieve the critical mass of women in positions of authority, we need to move beyond the artificial restrictions of gender stereotypes to a nation that fully benefits from the talents of its best and brightest in the executive suite, at the lectern and in the pulpit.

RH Reality Check sat down with Wilson to talk about the challenges of nurturing women's leadership in the wake of the divisive Congressional healthcare reform debate.

RHRC: The concept of healthcare reform has been so mutilated by politicians, religious interests and the media that it's not even recognizable to the American public. Essentially, it's become a debate about abortion over any other issue. But what strikes me is that we really haven't heard from women in leadership positions other than the pro-choice caucus. How can we bring in more women's voices to broaden the dialogue around healthcare reform?

MW: Part of why we haven't heard from more women is for years -- and it's not an accident -- choice was chosen as the issue to unravel. It was chosen because of the concern that Americans don't address [gender roles], which is what Kristin Luker wrote about years ago, in Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood.

Instead of looking at the areas of most importance to all of us on healthcare, the conversation is hijacked by this central concern about whether women are going to continue to choose to be mothers. In my experience, political men don't understand this. They really think it is about unborn life. That is not the truth. This is really about the role of women in America. We're not seen as important enough people to have had the right wing revolve around us. But we are.

I studied family therapy for awhile and the most important time you spend with a family if you want to change that system is in identifying the problem correctly.

Ninety percent of healthcare is provided by women in the home. So, perhaps, the experts on this issue should actually talk to the American public about pre-existing conditions and whether we should have a universal payer system because we're the ones doing it. We need to tell [those hijacking the real issue] to step aside.

RHRC: Who do you think is an authentic voice to deliver that kind of message because Americans are not getting it?

MW: I don't think it's a "who" but a how many of us are willing to say this. Motherhood is sacred. How many of us are willing to get out and say this is not at all about abortion. This is about whether we're going to be mothers. For men to understand this all of us need to join in on it. Too much of the rhetoric is about abortion and not enough about women and our roles in this country. And we better get off of it or we're not going to have a country left.

RHRC: While the debate was completely diverted to abortion we're not talking about equity in the workplace, academic opportunities, business leadership and all the other cultural expectations that are still crystallizing around the concept of motherhood. But we fail to recognize that women have juggled multiple roles all day, everyday.

MW: Most of the women in this country have never had an opportunity to do anything but juggle. They just don't have good places to be mothers and fathers as long as we avert the real issue -- the social-cultural ideal of women as wife and mother. Going back to Tocqueville's visit to America where he said the American people owe their great strides to women but I've never seen women so confined to private life. And it still exists.

Let's get this thing identified rightly so we can move on. Nobody calls that spade. It's not an issue I think women are willing to deliver.

Show me a woman without guilt and I'll show you a man. Guilt has never helped us in the area of race. Guilt has never helped us in the area of women and childbearing. We've got to get over our guilt so we can get the policies for our children and our nation right.

RHRC: What is the biggest take away from The White House Project's Benchmarking Women's Leadership report in terms of moving the nation forward from a policy and political perspective?

Marie Wilson: I think the biggest take away is how much we really need to focus on holding companies and communities accountable. And holding ourselves accountable for how we invest our money, how we buy things. The problem for me, at least, is we need to have enough women in. [The report found that a critical mass of women in leadership by achieving board/executive compositions of] 33 percent makes it normal and allows change to happen. But in order for us to get those women in we have to have support from men and we have to have women to join.

Those are not small issues. The take away is that we know what to do but it takes the political will to do it.

RHRC: Now that the report is complete, what's the one industry or two that you really want to dig into a little further? Is there something that stood out that makes you say I want to know more about this?

MW: Because of the economic crisis, I continue to think getting more women into leadership in business and finance is crucial.

We have to get global companies that are leaders, even in their weakened state, to take this on. If we don't get more women into these businesses to change what profit is and what bottom lines are we won't change what happens in international security and all the other sectors.

I think politics, business and media are the three [sectors] where we have to keep digging in.

RHRC: American society -- primarily politics, business and the media -- have always considered "women's issues" as a ghettoized topic. Now with the economy in tatters these issues are more important than ever. How do we turn those tables and get people to take healthcare, family leave, education and economic equity more seriously?

MW: Obama is being criticized around healthcare reform because he didn't make it an economic issue. Frankly, women have always known it was an economic issue because we have borne the brunt of healthcare. So part of what happens when a sector becomes important -- whether women have been the leaders in it or the people who have most cared about it, like education, health and the environment -- the things that are now coming up are the things that have been "women's issues" for years.

And now they are the economic issues. Women have to continue to say we're the experts. You're seeing it in these Pew Surveys that are coming out on how they trust women as much or more than men on some of these issues. Economic security is one that women have had to take on for years. We just have to own them.

RHRC: So why does the president appear to be retreating from the bold leadership many Americans expected of him?

MW: I really feel part of this issue is his attempts to bridge this really divisive partisan gap. That has been what's both inspiring and his downfall.

What you want to do in any course of action is choose the action with the most promising outcomes. I think what action he committed to and chose was one of being hands off and not going in and muscling [legislation] through. And giving both parties the chance actually do this together. I'm afraid betting on the most interesting and positive outcomes cost him. I really do. But it was a good try.

When you have people on one side saying "Ah, this will kill our president. This will ruin our president" and people on the other side saying "Well, I'm not voting for this I won't get elected" you have lost the whole meaning of what it means to be a public servant.

We Can't Overlook Reproductive Health Needs in Haiti

2010-02-05T07:00:00-05:00

Following the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, relief agencies, multilateral institutions and governments are increasingly shifting their focus from emergency response to longer term relief, rebuilding and development efforts. Given the scale of the disaster, many thousands of Haitians will likely be forced to live in camps or other makeshift arrangements for years, if not decades, to come. During this time of displacement, the health and lives of Haiti's women and girls-many of whom were already in a precarious situation because of poverty or low social status-are threatened by severe living conditions, including the virtual absence of reproductive health services.

Most immediately, there is an urgent need for clean delivery kits to ensure that childbirth is safe for mothers and their newborns. Likewise, displaced women and girls are especially vulnerable to sexual violence and exploitation, and proper care-including emergency contraception and HIV prophylaxis-must be made widely available to any victims of sexual violence. Also, the many Haitian women who find themselves cut off from their usual sources for family planning services and supplies, including condoms, must be provided with free contraceptives. A failure to address these needs heightens the risk for unwanted pregnancy and botched abortion, HIV and other STIs, and high-risk, life-threatening pregnancies and childbirth.

Fortunately, with increased awareness over the last 15 years of the importance of reproductive health for displaced people, coordination and collaboration among agencies working on these issues has grown, including through the work of the Reproductive Health Response in Conflict (RHRC) Consortium. Additionally, increased research and documentation of the specific needs of refugees and displaced people have been critical in improving service delivery and strengthening advocacy efforts aimed at donors, NGOs and policymakers.

The U.S. government's response to the Haitian earthquake has been both swift and strong. But Haiti's women also need the United States to reassert a leadership role in ensuring that sexual and reproductive health care is a core component of the humanitarian response to the crisis. As Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in her recent speech on global reproductive health: "Investing in the health of women, adolescents and girls is not only the right thing to do; it is also the smart thing to do. That is why we are integrating women's issues as key elements of our foreign policy agenda." It's time to put these wise words to the test in U.S. relief and rebuilding efforts in Haiti by prioritizing reproductive health care.

Click here for more information on: The reproductive health needs of refugees and displaced people.

Get Real! Am I Normal? Who Cares?

2010-02-05T07:00:00-05:00

This article is published in partnership with Scarleteen.org.

Anonymous asks:
Am I/is he/is she/is this/are we normal?

Heather Corinna replies:

As anyone who works in sex education or sexuality can tell you, when it comes to the questions people ask us, variations on the theme of "Am I normal?" reign supreme.

I just spent a half hour going through our advice question queue, doing a search on each page for the word "normal." At the moment, we have around 55 pages of unanswered questions. There's five to 15 questions on each page. I found only two pages where there was not at least one question with the term "normal" in it; where the heart of the question wasn't "Am I -- or is he, she or ze -- normal?"

Some questions about normality are really about health. That's a little different. Of course, from my view, that's also less about normal and more about healthy. If, for instance, someone has delayed puberty but no health issues they need to address causing it, then it doesn't really matter if it's normal because that person is healthy and not in need of healthcare or lifestyle changes to support health. Maybe someone's uterus is radically different than the uteri of most other female-bodied people, or someone's penis is bigger or smaller, but again, more times than not, those folks may or may not be exactly "normal" but they're healthy, so it's all good. We may have a disability that is exceptionally rare and thus, not normal by definition, and it may also present health problems so may not technically be healthy, but in cases like that, what's normal doesn't matter: what matters is finding a way for us to be comfortable, be supported and accepted and to live a life we want and enjoy.

What I'm mostly (though "My body looks like X, is this normal?" falls under this, too) talking about here is this kind of concern about normalcy:

Is it normal for me, as a woman, to be attracted to other women? Is it normal for me, as a man, to only be attracted to women? Is it normal for me not to feel attracted to anybody? Is it normal by boyfriend is excited by doing this, that or the other thing with his ejaculate? Is it normal I fantasize about this, that or the other thing and find it exciting? Is it normal if I reach orgasm from this thing? How about this one? Is it normal I don't reach orgasm from this thing that someone else does? Is it normal I don't reach orgasm yet at all? Is it normal I orgasm easily? Is it normal it's tough for me to reach orgasm? What's the normal amount of time to wait for sex with a partner? Is having sex with a partner on the first date, in the first week, in the first year normal? Is it normal for me, as a girl, to want to have sex? Is it normal for me, at 13, to have sexual feelings? Is it normal for me, as a guy, not to have interest in sex? Is it normal to watch porn? Is it normal for a guy to say no to sex? Is it normal for a girl to say yes? How can we have a normal sex life? How can we be like normal couples? Is it normal to laugh during sex? Is it normal to cry after orgasm? Is it normal to feel good about sex? Is it normal to feel bad about sex? Is it normal to only reach orgasm by myself? Is it normal to only reach orgasm with a partner? Is it normal to masturbate? Is it normal to masturbate if I'm a girl, if I'm 14, if I'm not ejaculating, if I don't get off, if I do get off, if I have a sexual partner? Is it normal to feel nervous about sex? Is it normal not to feel nervous? Is wanting sex twice a day, every day, once a week, a few times a month, once a year, once every decade, or never normal? Is it normal to like this kind of sex? Is it normal not to like this kind? Is it normal to feel a lot from this kind of stimulation, but not that kind? Is it normal to only want casual sex? Is it normal to only want sex in a marriage? Is it normal for my love relationship not to be sexual? Is it normal for me to have so many questions about sex and what's normal in the first place?

The answer to any of those questions and others like them can vary. The answer may be yes, maybe, not really (which is the least common answer of all), I don't know, and, most often, that it sounds like that's normal for you right now, or has been normal for you so far. "Normal according to whom?" is another common reply. "No," when it comes to questions like those, is never the answer. However, no matter what the answer is, they all beg the question, "Why does normal matter?"

Understand that I totally totally get how important being normal can feel for people, especially for younger people who often feel they don't or won't fit in anywhere and are concerned sex will be no exception. Working with people and sexuality for as long as I have, I absolutely recognize that there are many people who feel it's critically important their sexuality and sex lives meet the real or perceived standards of others or culture-at-large (whatever the heck that even is).

While I get that intellectually, I only kind of get it from an personal standpoint. I myself figured from a very early age onward that I was a weirdo in general, probably not normal, and that my sexuality and sex life was likely no exception. And I decided not to give a hoot and just let my freak flag fly, especially since it all felt great to me and people I chose to be sexual with, and I had little respect or care for most "norms" I met and many of the people who promoted them. Of course, the irony is that in hindsight, doing that job I do now, I know full well that for as much as anyone is normal, I was and am normal, too, even in my weirdness.

The most concise definition of normal is "being approximately average."

Doesn't that sound so super exciting? I sure hope in my life I can reach the amazing goal of being approximately average. Who needs world peace, the end of global hunger, to develop the cure for HIV or to win a Pulitzer when we could accomplish that? Sorry, snark attack. I'm done now.

That definition makes clear that the idea of normalcy in sexuality is an oxymoron. Because there is no average for all people. Not even an approximate one. When it all comes down to it with sex and sexuality, because of how diverse we all are, either everyone is normal or no one is.

There is no one sexual normal: nor for men, not for women, not for those who are or identify as neither. Not for straight people or queer people, married people or not-married people, young people or old people or any other group of people there is. Anyone who tells you there is either doesn't know much about human sexuality or wants you to think they, you or others are normal or abnormal because of some kind of personal agenda.

Another definition of normal is "conforming with or constituting a norm or standard or level or type or social norm; not abnormal," which I think is more often what a lot of people are concerned about with sexuality. But that's also problematic. What's a social norm? More specifically, how big is the social group making that a norm? For anyone making a norm, what's their criteria in doing so? How broad has their study been on what everyone does/is/feels, if they've done any real study at all? Why are they saying something is normal: is it because they really think it is, or just because they badly want it, or themselves, to be? Are they saying something is normal in order to educate and inform people to earnestly help better their lives, or to try and control people for their own benefit? What about the fact that so often, people who are loudest about what is or should be "normal" are people for whom that given standard isn't even what's normal for them? (I'm talking to you Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, Mark Foley and all the myriad folks out there like you.)

I have something really important I want to tell you. Based on everything I know, from the many years I've worked in sexuality now, from my own life, from the lives of people who I have been close to sexually, or who have talked with me about their sexualities and sexual lives, one of the biggest favors you can do for your sexual self, any sexual partnerships you may have, and for people as a whole, is to stop asking that question. To learn to say "To hell with normal."

We do have a few pervasive, worldwide social norms: one of the biggies with sex is an intense concern about being normal. That pervasive norm (and a few others related to it) also has a pervasive consequence, which is that a whole lot of people's strong concern about normalcy and trying to meet standards of normalcy tends to get in the way of people having sex lives and sexualities they feel good about, that are really for and about them, and that result in satisfying lives and experiences. Going batty trying to seek out or be what's sexually normal often results in feeling like an outside in your own sexuality, like you aren't connected with it at all, like you aren't at home in it, like it's an empty room, than it does in finding sex and sexuality to be a place of joy, a place of richness, to be a place you feel at home in, alone or with partners.

The sooner you can get past worrying about if you're normal or not, the sooner you can start discovering what your unique, own sexuality is like and what you really want from it. The sooner you do that, the sooner you'll be able to create and experience a sexual life that's really a good fit for you -- not anyone else, you -- and to a level of comfort with your own sexuality that will feel good to you, physically and emotionally. Ask any sexologist or sex therapist for a second opinion on that: I can assure you that they'll concur.

We've said it before, and we'll keep saying it: what's most normal and most common in sexuality is diversity.

Any ideas anyone may have that there is one default sexuality or sex life, one set of sexual things or ideas that most people -- or all people except you -- idealize, want, experience, enjoy or sign unto -- are incorrect. It's normal to have a range of emotional and physical reactions to all kinds of sex as well as to not-sex-at-all. It's normal for people to be sexually attracted to any number of different kinds of people or to not be sexually attracted to people. It's normal for people to like all kinds of sexual things and dislike all kinds of sexual things by themselves, with a given partner, or full-stop. It's normal to masturbate or not to. It's normal to have sexual feelings or desires at any given age, it's normal to want this much sex or that little. It's normal to have a wide array of sexual fantasy. If something is normal for a person of one sex or gender, it's normal for a person of another. It's normal to say yes to something sexual and normal to decline. It's normal to orgasm and not to orgasm. It's normal to feel excited sometimes and normal to feel bored to tears at other times.

With anything like that, given things may be more or less common either for all people, those of a given gender, age, orientation or some other exceptionally broad classification of people, those of a given community or peer group, but if they are happening to you, for the time being or for your whole life, they're your normal right now. And I swear to you, that really is all that is truly relevant and all that's earnestly productive and beneficial to you and everyone else.

If you feel you must, you can still ask me if you're normal. I'm not saying what I am because I need you to stop asking. But I'm going to keep giving you the same answer. I'm going to keep telling you that there are few things under the sun when it comes to sexuality that only one person in the world thinks about (or doesn't), wants (or doesn't) or enjoys (or doesn't), and that if you're feeling the way you are, having the experiences you are, and all of that is real to you, that it's normal for you. And that question is also going to keep you stuck in the same place: there are far more interesting questions to ask which will elicit far more useful answers.

Sex and sexuality are "normal" in that they are, in all their diversity, as well as in their absence, one common part of most people's lives, and one common part of who nearly all of us are. But we can never say any one given thing is normal or abnormal because to do so would also be to say that there is one kind of sexuality or sex life, one kind of sexual experience or desire, which is "approximately average" for all people. That's something any of us who have worked in sex for a while, and who considers all the information we take in about it with as little bias and projection as possible, knows just isn't true or real.

You don't have to be normal. No one does, and everyone has stuff about themselves or their sexuality that one person or another would not consider normal, because not only does sexuality widely vary, so do people's opinions about what is and isn't normal. If you find yourself in any kind of sexual situation or partnership where your "being normal" is way important to you or someone else -- where it's far more important than being yourself -- you're probably in a situation or partnership that just isn't a good fit for you.

All you have to be, or strive to be, is comfortable with who you really are sexually, and to honor and respect who anyone else really is. If we're talking about your sexuality or masturbation alone and it feels physically and emotionally good to you, chances are very high it is all good. No worries. If it doesn't, either you just need to try something different, or look into, sometimes with help, why you feel bad. With sexual partnerships, same deal: does what you're doing, or how you've both framed this, feel physically and emotionally good to you and that other person (or people)? Okay, then. And if not, it's time to do some talking, make some adjustments (physical, interpersonal and/or mental) or reconsider if a given situation really is the right one for everyone involved in terms of what they want, what feels right to them, and where they're at right now.

It stands to mention that if you have the idea that who you are sexually, or what you like or want, is something you are convinced absolutely no one else in the world will share or understand, you should know that that is profoundly unlikely: if there's something you like, while not everyone may like it, at least one other person does, too. Probably way more than just one. By all means, in some cases, finding sexual partners or partnerships that are perfectly compatible, that are a really good fit for both people can be tougher than in others (and that also can change: we may be very compatible with one person for years, then have changes one or both of us experience change that fit). But at the same time, it's often harder than the world makes it sound for anyone to find others with whom they have a great sexual fit, and all the more so when we're also trying to seek out sexual relationships that also are a good fit in other ways; that are bigger relationships than primarily sexual ones, and where we're compatible in every way possible.

It might help to think about the people in the world you admire most. It's likely that a big part of why you do is that there is something exceptional about them: something different. Maybe they had a challenge or adversity they have faced remarkably well, better than a lot of other people have. Maybe they're different in a way you can relate to, and they don't hide that difference or act like there's something bad about being different in some way. Maybe they have asked something of themselves or others that is more than what people will usually ask. Whatever it is, it's unlikely that you feel inspired by someone else because they're just that normal, just so awesomely homogenous. When you like or admire other people, the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about how cool they are probably is not "Wow, they are so totally average!"

So, let whatever it is you think may be your freak flag fly. If you don't, how will someone else like you (or not like you, but who benefits from knowing you), who thinks you're amazing, ever find you? People talk about sexual risks all the time, but all to often they leave out what it means to take a risk of being ourselves, and that that risk -- which risky like anything else -- is mostly likely to result in positive, wanted consequences and results, not negative things we don't want.

Sex and sexuality is supposed to be about personal expression: it's a way of exploring and expressing who we and others are, what unique alchemy we make and relationship we have with a partner or partners, and it's a perpetually unanswered question because every time we ask it in each experience, we're never exactly the same person twice, and our sexuality is ever-evolving, just like all of who we are. If it was a place best suited to all of us being exactly the same, to never changing or doing anything differently, I assure you that we all would have gotten really bored with it a long time ago.

Now if you're asking me, this is something we should strive to do in every aspect of our lives: to be as much of who we uniquely are not just in sex, but in everything. Sex and sexuality is a good place to get some experience accepting you and others for who we are, and being as authentic as you can. But it's also a place where trying to be like an idea of everyone else, trying to meet a given standard or worrying more about what's normal than what feels good for you and what feels like it's really about you, is particularly poorly suited, especially if you want a sexuality and sexual life that are anything but...well, approximately average.

Which I don't think anyone at all -- even someone who asks if they're normal -- really wants.

International Violence Against Women Act Addresses the War Against Women

2010-02-04T19:35:37-05:00

The United Nations Development Fund for Women estimates that one out of every three women will be beaten, raped or otherwise abused during her lifetime.

The United States today took steps towards implementing an international approach to stemming these and other kinds of violence against women around the world.

In an act of bipartisanship, the International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA) was introduced today by Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA), John Kerry (D-MA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME) and Representatives Bill Delahunt (D-MA) and Ted Poe (R-TX).

Amnesty International, one of the key drafters of the bill, says that I-VAWA,

"...would for the first time make the epidemic of violence against women worldwide a priority of the United States government and integrate prevention strategies across foreign policy and assistance programs."

Along with Amnesty International, Women Thrive Worldwide and the Family Violence Prevention Fund, helped to develop the legislation.

Esta Soler, president of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, in response to the bill said,

"Much of the support in Congress to address violence against women emanages from high-profile emergencies like the crises in Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It's a commendable impulse to respond to emergencies, but violence against women is an emergency every day. We need a response that is sustained and durable enough to address not only today's emergencies, but those that lie ahead."

According to Amnesty International, I-VAWA would,

"...expand the government's ability to prevent violence against women caught in conflict, support non-governmental organizations that are combating violence on the ground, and put the United States unequivocally on the record with countries around the world in saying that ending violence against women and girls is a national priority.

I-VAWA will support innovative programs that have been shown to effectively reduce acts of violence. These include programs that create economic and educational opportunities for women, challenge public attitudes that permit violence, improve health services for suvivors and bring perpetrators of violence to justice."

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Co-Chair of the Congressional Women's Caucus talks specifically about the ways in which I-VAWA would help the women of Afghanistan who have "bourn the brunt of years of warfare" (brought on by the United States so it is only fitting that we figure out a way to address the impact on the women of that country). Schakowsky said,

"This is a crucial year for Afghanistan, and the country's future success will depend, in large part, on its women...they will also form the underpinning of a stable and peaceful Afghanistan. No woman should have to live her life in fear of attack. I am proud to support this important legislation."

Violence against women, of course, has many root causes but one thing is clear: if we are to make deep and lasting change it will be necessary to not simply involve males but to tailor gender-specific programs. In the U.S., violence prevention advocate Jackson Katz calls violence against women a men's issue, in fact. He cites the fact that in the U.S. (and of course globally) men primarily fill the positions of power. This power imbalance is a critical element of violence against women.

"Our culture is producing violent men, and violence against women has become institutionalized. We need to take a step back and examine the institutionalized polices drafted by men that perpetuate the problem."

Jackson also notes that, in fact, males are intimately involved with the females who are abused, which makes it a men's issue as well:

"It is estimated that 18 million women, children, and men have been sexually abused in the U.S.," Katz said. "Think about all the men who love these people and have been personally and profoundly affected by knowing that their loved ones have been a victim of sexual violence. So don't tell me these are not men's issues."

Will I-VAWA address another central necessity in regards to violence against women: sexual and reproductive health services? Sexual violence in the form of rape and other sexual assault robs women of their ability to protect themselves from both sexually transmitted infection and pregnancy. The integration of violence prevention programs with HIV/AIDS and other STI prevention and treatment programs as well as pregnancy prevention is critical to any successful violence prevention efforts. From access to emergency contraception for rape and sexual assault victims to addressing how substantially rape increases womens' and girls' risk of HIV to investing in the development of woman-controlled contraceptive methods and universal access to female condoms. And it's not only about prevention. Women's health advocates remind us that it's just as critical to invest in health care provider training including counseling. As Neelanjana Mukhia writes on RH Reality Check,

The Women Won't Wait campaign has been calling for scaled up training of health care providers, particularly providers of HIV voluntary counseling, testing and treatment, to recognize and respond to signs of violence. HIV voluntary counseling and testing, and treatment interventions must include protocols, systems and services to respond to violence against women and girls.

I-VAWA has been introduced into Congress in the past (in 2007 by Vice President Biden who has been a stalwart advocate) but, as Alex Dibranco at Change.org asks, "Who doesn't support ending violence against women across the world?"

Tebow's Tears: Is God Really A Gators Fan?

2010-02-04T19:03:01-05:00

The following is reprinted, from December 2009, with permission from Religion Dispatches. You can sign up for their free daily newsletter here.

First, the “full disclosure”: I am not a Florida fan, nor am I a member of the “Gator Nation.” More to the point, I refuse to accept the cosmology I saw on a bumper sticker last weekend, while driving home from Florida, one suggesting that “If you’re not a Gator, you’re gator bait.

So I bring some baggage, if not actually a prejudice, to this topic.

On Saturday, one of those rare sporting convergences took place, almost on the order of a solar eclipse for sport. The two top-ranked college football teams met in their SEC Conference Championship game, and barring some sort of overtime scrim, the loser would drop out of contention for the National Title this year. There was no such scrim this year; Alabama won in convincing fashion, beating Florida by a final score of 32-13 (while they led throughout the game and led at halftime, Alabama scored 13 points in the second half while their impressive defense held Florida scoreless).

Still, the media story all year long has been Florida, and in particular Florida’s remarkably gifted quarterback, Tim Tebow. It is very difficult to watch Tebow play without being impressed by his uncanny combination of athletic skills—among them, speed and agility, raw physical power, boldness, and creative intelligence—and his evident skills as a team leader.

But another story has been brewing for the past year and a half; it became a far more prominent and visible news story in the immediate lead-up to yesterday’s game. That story concerns Tim Tebow’s eyes.

To be more precise, it concerns Tebow’s decision, roughly in the middle of last year’s football season, to punctuate the dark stripes under his eyes with biblical verses. Throughout the remainder of the 2008 season, it was Philippians 4:13 (“I can do everything through Him who gives me strength”). But for the 2008 title game, he selected a more predictable gospel verse, John 3:16 (‘Jn’ under his right eye, 3:16’ under his left), and thus created the precedent of picking a new verse each week.

“...Strengthen Your Weak Knees.”

Throughout the 2009 season, it has become something of a parlor game in the media to determine what verse Tebow has selected for each week’s game, and why, then try to decode how the verse in question did or did not fit into the dynamics of that week’s game.

Last week was “rivalry week” and that meant that Florida played Florida State, still coached by a game octogenarian, Bobby Bowden. That game was a drubbing, not a grudge match, with the 37-10 final score scarcely indicative of how one-sided a performance it was.

Tebow selected Hebrews 12:1-2 for last week’s game.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

In a comical touch, some television announcers at last week’s game misread Tebow’s eye-paint, and read from Hebrews 12:12 (“therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees”), correcting themselves just before one of Tebow’s rare missteps: a long run from scrimmage in which he tried to do too much against too many, and in the course of attempting to manhandle three defenders, had the ball knocked from his hands. That fumble led to Florida State’s first score.

This week, Tebow’s choice was John 16:33.

I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.

The word that John uses in this verse, a verbal form of Nike, is the Greek word for victory, or conquest. “I have conquered the world” is another perfectly plausible way to translate what John was saying.

In that sense, the verse was a strange selection. The first half speaks of tribulation in the world; the second half speaks of overcoming the world. No doubt many will speculate that Tebow sensed the tribulation that was to come in the Georgia Dome on Saturday and chose the verse accordingly: On the gridiron, tribulation; but peace in Christ Jesus.

Still, that seems more like reading omens than Christian Bible study.

Bumper-Sticker Spirituality

I have struggled in the past several weeks to come to terms with my own apparent prejudices. Something about these painted Bible verses offends me, and I have not yet been able to articulate a way for that reaction to be consistent. To be sure, as a scholar of religion, I am frustrated, when I am not dumbfounded, by the happy-go-lucky and freewheeling scriptural exegeses that Tebow’s weekly verse selection now prompts on national televison.

But that hardly seems fair. Tim Tebow is an evangelical Christian of impeccable pedigree, and he has used his raw athletic talent to get me, and tens of thousands like me each week, to pick up the Bible and read it. That is no mean accomplishment.

More substantively perhaps, this kind of bumper-sticker spirituality—quote a Bible verse, just one or two, and completely out of context—makes me very nervous. It invites the false assumption that one can cherry-pick from the Bible, finding the verse one needs for any occasion. If you are at a sporting match, then look for someplace where Mark describes a contest, Paul invokes athletics or a great cloud of witnesses, or some other evangelist invokes victory. There does seem to be something down-dumbing in such a biblical practice.

But that does not seem fair to Tim Tebow, somehow, a remarkable and remarkably serious young man who won a Heisman Trophy as a sophomore, and returned to Florida to play out his senior year precisely in order to play yesterday’s game and return to compete for the university’s second national championship in a row.

There is no way to know what this verse meant to him when he selected it.

One week ago, after the trouncing of in-state rival, Florida State, the local newspapers opined,

Tim Tebow’s eye black is waterproof.
His perfect season is starting to look shatterproof.

That’s one way to read Hebrews 12:1-2. And maybe even John 16:33. But the season does not “belong” to Tim Tebow, nor to any other player; nor to his eye-paint, nor to the Bible. Perhaps here was the beginning of the hubris. Perhaps.

Learning How to Lose

But the image that struck me at game’s end, when I wanted to feel more celebratory, was the brief photographic image of Tebow’s tears streaming down across that Bible verse. The waterproofing may have kept the ink from running, but the spirit behind the selection was running fast.

Or else it was coming into focus. It is easy to slip into the temptation of the false security any theology can provide, if it stops being careful and stops paying attention. God on your side would seem to imply perfect seasons, flawless execution, just causes, and even more just results.

But that is not football. And that is not “the world,” as John the evangelist warns in the very verse Tebow selected. Every champion is always but one week away from meeting the player, or the team, that is bigger and faster and stronger. Learning how to lose is one key aspect of such an encounter. The trick is to do so peace, with good cheer.

According to the canons of the New Testament so regularly deployed by Tebow—there have been 4 selections from the Hebrew Bible this year, 2 from the Christian gospels, and 6 or 7 from Paul’s letters (depending on who you think wrote the Letter to the Hebrews)—“God on your side” meant a shameful and excruciating death on a cross and the abandonment by every friend and even God Godself. How one contends with that dark night of soul says a great deal about the content of one’s character, whether one is Christian or not.

Tim Tebow is a Christian, and he seems to apply himself to that practice with seriousness and elegance. The real interest lies not in celebrating a Florida defeat, nor in digging for the unwitting irony of Tebow’s scripture selection. No, the question is how Tim Tebow will play the next time he suits up and takes the field in the Sugar Bowl.

If his character, Christian and otherwise, is anything like what he has demonstrated it to be, then he will lead his teammates to return to the field with renewed purpose and commitment, and will tenaciously apply himself to achieving victory, even if it is not in the contest of his choosing. He will look for the virtue in the moment he has been given, and he will be grateful for it.

The question has less to do with what Bible verse will speak best to that occasion, his next and final collegiate performance, and more to do with the way he will play and how that play will attest to a biblically and theistically informed life.

Department of Defense Approves Emergency Contraception

2010-02-04T18:13:55-05:00

Thanks to the hard work and support of Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) and Rep. Michael Michaud (D-ME), the Department of Defense has now approved the use of emergency contraception for women serving overseas.

Currently, there are nearly 350,000 women who rely on the military facilities for health care.

"This independent expert panel made the right call: Women in the military serving overseas should be able to access EC the same way women stateside do,"[NARAL Pro-Choice America president Nancy] Keenan, said. "I firmly believe that this decision marks an end to the political intrusion of the previous administration that blocked military women from having this guaranteed access. It's a tragedy that women in uniform have been denied such basic health care. We applaud the medical experts for standing up for military women."

Despite the support of political leaders and the administration, pro-choice advocates fear that anti-choice groups may apply pressure to force a reversal on the policy. To block such an effort, NARAL Pro-Choice America is leading a campaign asking activists to voice their support for the DoD's move.